


Rootless

by Zoidwick



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 00:09:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21127550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoidwick/pseuds/Zoidwick
Summary: This is a story written as a response to the following writing prompt - Your metro or train doesn't stop and keeps going... into a strange portal in what maaaay be space? A new world? Who knows? Anyways, the people it carries now are what's left to rekindle humanity.





	Rootless

I kept running even though my lungs were beginning to hurt, flying down the stairs and through the archway. There was my train, waiting for me like it did every weekday. Things felt different as soon as I saw it, but I couldn’t stop to think about it and just about managed to make it onto the carriage right before the doors shut on me.

I practically doubled over trying to catch my breath. The train started moving and I grabbed onto one of the poles, finally straightening up. I froze.

Now I could see why things had felt different. It was just after rush hour and the carriage should’ve been full of people, but instead, there were only twenty or so. Some of them were looking at me but turning away as they noticed me return their gaze, and others sat in their own worlds, headphones on and slumped against the windows. 

I took a seat in the middle of one of the rows, directly opposite a young woman about my age. She had dark brown hair tipped with red. She looked up at me from her book and I could see she had somewhat of a goth aesthetic. Her lips were deep red-black and eyes heavily lined, but not over the top. A couple of seconds later she looked down again.

I pulled out a magazine from my rucksack and started reading to pass the journey home.

There was a feeling I couldn’t put my finger on, like an internal itch too far from relief. At first, I could ignore it, but after a few minutes that was becoming impossible. I stopped reading and looked around. I wasn’t the only one; the goth woman opposite me was doing the same.

She was frowning slightly, and I imagined it matched my expression exactly.

“Hey, why’s the train not stopping?” That voice came from my right.

I looked down the carriage and a man with a long beard and piercings was standing up, leaning towards the window. He’d directed his words to no one, but everyone else had heard him and they, too, were now looking out of the windows. We were going past the next stop without slowing down. The station signs were speeding past too fast to read and I noticed there was nobody on the platforms. That internal itch suddenly revealed itself; an unease that was cavernous.

“What the hell?” I heard the goth whisper.

She was next to me, confused and worried. Our eyes met and all I could do was shrug.

I looked down the carriage again and the bearded man was trying to pull the emergency stop handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Someone else, a tall woman with braids, was attempting to speak into the emergency phone line to the driver, but judging from her expression, she was having no luck.

“No signal at all!” She stated, after she put the phone down.

That didn’t stop a couple of other people trying, too. It took a couple of minutes for it to really begin sinking in that the train wasn’t stopping and we seemed to be isolated from the outside world. I walked up to one end of the carriage to look through the windows to the adjoining carriage and noted that there were even fewer people there.

One of the men saw me and came up to their side, but when we tried to open the windows, they wouldn’t budge. We tried the doors, but again, it was fruitless. I indicated their phone, putting my hand to my ear with my two middle fingers folded in, but the man shook his head. No communication there, either. Between our gestures to each other, we figured out that their emergency-stop level wasn’t functional either.

I turned back and walked to the middle of the carriage again. Most of the passengers had gathered around the emergency line and the emergency stop lever, but it was now established that we were helpless.

“Our mobiles aren’t working, either,” The goth said to me when I rejoined them.

That hadn’t even occurred to me. I took my phone out and could see there was no signal, despite the fact we were still over-ground.

“Shit!” The bearded man exclaimed loudly. “What if this is terrorists or something?”

That sent a ripple of discomfort through everyone. I didn’t want to think about that, at all. It’d happened before in London, so the thought of it wasn’t too far-fetched. That particular incident had just been suicide bombers, different from what was happening now, but it still played on my mind. Anything unusual like this was bound to fuck with anyone.

“What if we hit another train or something?” One of the others, a middle-aged man with a cane, asked in a slightly trembling voice. He sat down on the nearest seat, his hand gripping the arm rest tightly.

At this point is when I started to zone out. The full reality of the situation was starting to weigh in on me. I was on a train that showed no signs of stopping, surrounded by strangers, and I had no idea if at any point I was going to be safe. I could vaguely hear the others discussing the situation amongst themselves, some voices getting tenser and louder, but I couldn’t really discern any of their words.

The anxiety set in. My knees felt like liquid and I half stumbled on my way back to the seat I’d chosen, as if it was suddenly the only familiar thing in the world to me. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, doing my best to regulate it before I lost control. Ironically, hearing the rhythm of the train’s movement helped, but not quite enough.

The real help came when I felt a hand slip into mine. I looked to my left and the goth woman was staring right at me. She squeezed my hand.

“Breathe with me?” She asked.

I nodded without even thinking about it.

She kept her eyes on mine and I could see her breathing deliberately; long, slow and measured. It was like my lungs latched onto that regularity and began to synchronise with her breathing within a few seconds. The rest of the carriage fell away and it was just me and her.

Her eyes were calming and mesmerising.

“Feeling better?” She asked.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“It’s okay. I’m freaking out, too.”

I noticed she hadn’t let go of me, but her hand felt so good to hold that I didn’t want to bring it up.

“I’m Amy,” She said.

“Brandon.”

She swallowed nervously. “What do you think is going on?”

“No idea. I’m just trying not to think of the worst.”

“What’s the worst?” She asked.

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m trying not to think about it.”

Amy nodded like she understood.

The train sped past the next station. Everyone went quiet and watched the station go by. Again, there were no people on the platforms, no indication of any other life. I heard a couple of the others groan and wondered if they’d been hoping the train would stop. That hadn’t crossed my mind and I don’t know if it was just because I’d accepted what was going on or I was just that fatalistic.

“I got on the station before you,” Amy said quietly. “Felt weird. Weren’t that many people around, but I just thought maybe something was going on that I didn’t know about… something that wasn’t anything to worry about, I mean.”

“I get it. I felt the same when I was running for the train but I didn’t realise what felt off, ‘til I got on and saw it wasn’t packed.”

“I’m scared,” She admitted after a pause.

“Me, too.”

The station was gone. The bearded man was still at the lever just staring at it as if that would make any difference, while the rest of the group talked amongst themselves. I didn’t want to know what they were talking about, because I didn’t want to hear any speculation that would trigger anxiety or paranoia for me again.

It was a couple of minutes or so before the outside plunged into darkness and we were suddenly underground. The sound of the train was magnified in the tunnels and through the window on one side, we were close enough to see bundles of cables strapped to the wall.

“We need to find a way of stopping this thing!” The bearded man announced, cutting through all other chatter.

Everyone turned to look at him.

“We need to bust open these doors and go through the carriages to the front,” He said, pointing to one end of the carriage.

“And how are we going to do that?” The braided woman asked. There was a hint of exasperation in her voice.

“I already tried to open the window and door at that end,” I told them. “Nothing budged.”

“But you didn’t try and break it open, right?” The bearded man pointed out. “We can use the fire extinguisher,” He said to the braided woman.

Without waiting for a response, he walked over to the extinguisher, picking it up easily and took a step back. With a deep breath and fluid movement which made me think he’d definitely done something similar before, he swung the extinguisher at the window. The sound of the impact seemed to reverberate throughout the carriage; a deep, heavy clunk that made me uncomfortable. Nothing happened to the window, at all. It looked as though the extinguisher hadn’t even hit it and instead, it had bounced off, causing the bearded man to stumble back. He dropped the extinguisher and began to hold his arms, moaning in pain.

“Hey, you okay?” The braided woman asked, approaching him.

The bearded man shook his head, moving his arms slowly as if to gauge the damage he had done to himself. “It’s like there’s something there,” He groaned.

“What do you mean?” The braided woman had got to him and was carefully examining his arms.

I never heard her reply to that because the entire train went dark.

The train was no longer rocking rhythmically, and the sound of its movement was gone. It was so still that I wasn’t even sure it was moving anymore, but it had to be, since we hadn’t experienced the force of it stopping.

“Holy shit…” I heard Amy whisper.

I didn’t have to ask.

I’m sure all of us were staring out of the window, wondering if what we were seeing was real. It was impossible to tell how far the darkness stretched before the light began; wispy curtains of light that struck the mind with their immensity. As far as the eye could see, the curtains looked like they were made of stars that slowly wafted, the edges of which were frayed and seemed to disappear into and reappear from the darkness at random. I looked behind me to see they were on both sides of the train.

I managed to move towards the window despite the fact I was terrified. I nearly pressed my face against the glass and looked up to see that the curtains stretch indefinitely, far beyond my vision could hold them.

“Are we in space?” Amy’s voice was almost silent and I had to strain to hear. “This… what… I don’t understand.”

“We’re still moving,” I said, looking down. It was like there was a broken blanket of stars below us, close enough that I could see it moving past slowly.

I could hear the others in the carriage murmuring amongst each other, but I was too absorbed in what I was seeing to care. Despite our predicament, I couldn’t help but think that the curtains of stars were beautiful. Amy squeezed my hand and I realised she hadn’t let go for the entire time. I looked at her, just about able to make her face out in the near darkness.

“We’re nowhere near home, are we?” She whispered.

I shook my head. As crazy and as impossible it seemed, we couldn’t be. We’d left London.

“What the fuck is that?” We both turned to look at the bearded man, who was still holding one of his arms. Then we looked to where his gaze was directed.

In the far distance, there were ripples in the curtain of light. It looked as though the stars were shuddering a little in unison until suddenly, they were moving to new positions, quickly and efficiently. It was hypnotic to watch. Slowly, a figure coalesced, a figure all too large to comprehend. Multi-limbed, though mostly humanoid in appearance. There were no real discernible facial features, just a vague outline which looked oddly distorted. It hit me that it was because they were¬ stars; the distortion was coming from their gravity. There were around six arms I could make out, the edges and hands too far away to see and the torso alone was fully in view. There was a head… if you could call it that. There were wavering tentacles where the face should’ve been, streams of stars moving slowly like they were lazily searching the area in front of the head. And there were… wings? Something anyway. Stars streaming off to the darkness behind the figure originating from what would’ve been its upper back.

The figure moved and the facial tentacles slowed and directed towards us. It was alive and looking at us.

Amy and I slowly stepped back, barely breathing.

_Be not alarmed._

Amy and I looked at each other and the others. In all our faces we could see that we had all heard those words. If a yawning chasm ever had a voice, it was this one. No one spoke.

_You are safe here._

The lights in the train slowly came back but not all the way. The end of the carriage distorted, like the entire space in that area bloomed in odd ways, the features like the door and poles expanding and widening, until… something seemed to step through the very fabric of reality.

It was the figure. I looked out of the window, and the colossal figure still stood there, but an exact copy was now also in the train. I could see its form with a little more clarity. It was the same head, same humanoid figure, but the extra four arms seemed to sprout from its back and curl around to the front. The wings were vast, projecting far beyond the confines of the train so we couldn’t see their limits, and small pulses of dim blue-white lights radiated towards the edges in regular patterns.

_No harm will come._

We couldn’t see a mouth. There was no indication in the figure that it had spoken in any way, but the words seemed to be in our heads anyway. Telepathy?

_Yes._

I was startled.

“What… What’s going on?” Amy asked softly.

_You are chosen._

“For what?” I asked, my voice sounding a little firmer. So far, I found it easy to believe this being was benevolent. I couldn’t have explained why.

_We returned. We found your world wanting._

“Returned?”

_We returned._

Amy and I exchanged a look.

“What are you trying to say?” The braided woman spoke up. “None of this makes sense!”

_You are chosen. Your world did not fulfil its purpose. It ends. You will begin anew._

“What?” I gasped. I heard the ripple of surprise behind me, too. “The world’s ending? What do you mean?”

_We found it wanting._

“But you can’t just… No! You can’t just do that!”

The being tilted its head to the side a little and very slowly, raised one arm up towards us. Its four extra limbs unfurled at the same time, the ends showing a palm surrounded by four finger-like appendages in the shape of a cross.

There was a deep sound, short and sharp and the entire world turned to chaos. Imagery ran through my mind in staccato bursts. The beginning of our world, the seeding of and the rise of life, the engineering, the old Gods and their leaving and finally the history of our species. Things went wrong somewhere. Things kept going wrong and now the world was a failure. The Plan hadn’t worked. They couldn’t interfere because it was against the laws set out by their own kind. And now, they were taking it all away.

The stream of imagery ended suddenly and I blinked several times. My head felt fuzzy for a few seconds. I looked at Amy. She was rubbing her eyes.

“Did you see what I saw?” She whispered.

We looked at the being.

_Do you understand?_

I nodded. I think we all did. We were in awe and we felt much calmer. I don’t know why that was; probably the being’s influence on us, but now I was no longer afraid or anxious. I understood.

“What about the rest?” I asked. “The rest of the people down there? My friends?”

_It will be painless. We are not without mercy._

I looked at the others. Some of them were looking calm, a few of them had frowns on their faces.

“Why us, though?” The braided woman asked.

_You are all alone._

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t have any family,” I said, turning to her, instinctively guessing that was what the being meant.

She looked surprised. “Oh. Neither do I.”

“Nor me,” The middle-aged man with a cane chimed in.

The rest of the group said much the same. So here we were, chosen for our lack of families. I wondered what their stories were. My parents had died during my teenage years and I had no other relatives. My friends had become my family, which had been the most important thing in my life. That still left me rootless, though, and now I wasn’t even on Earth anymore.

“Where are we going?” I asked, feeling resigned to my fate. What else could I do?

_The new world. You will all be the beginning._

“Uh…”

_You have been chosen for this._

“What do you mean by beginning?” The bearded man asked, frowning deeply.

_You have been chosen in pairs, for this. You are… matched._

Amy and I looked at each other, wide eyed. I think I might have blushed. My face certainly felt a little warmer and so did my hand. That’s when I realised we were still holding hands and had been for most of the last several minutes. I felt self-conscious all of a sudden, but I still didn’t let go, and neither did she.

_See each other._

That deep sound again, longer this time and far gentler but the effect it had was far more potent than seeing the creation of our world. This time, we saw each other.

I saw Amy’s life. I saw how afraid she was as a child, how alone she’d felt growing up and how much she’d craved a family. I saw her trying to fit in with her peers. I saw her be with a few families, some of which she couldn’t connect with and one she did but couldn’t stay with, so that loss felt even worse. I saw her find her family in her friends, but she had the same kind of rootlessness I’d felt for so long. I saw her craving for love.

I saw her when she was twelve and she discovered how good bacon tasted. When she was sixteen and she was protesting the exploitation of overseas workers. She was eighteen when she lost her virginity and he was cruel to her afterwards. She used to go to live music performances in old pubs and wish she had the ability to sing. There was a moment in her life when she contemplated leaving the country altogether. When she was twenty-two, she was finally safe and comfortable with herself, but only because she’d put up those walls after the boyfriend she’d had when she eighteen. I saw every time she’d fallen prey to her own anxiety and when it had stopped her from doing things, as well as when she began to learn to conquer it. I saw moments of her alone, her mind wandering, fantasising about all manner of things. I saw her.

In the same vein, she saw me.

The spell broke. Our minds span for a few moments and as the fog cleared, we were looking at each other, but now we were no longer strangers. We knew each other with an intimacy that many people had striven for and rarely achieved. And she was suddenly so, _so_ attractive to me.

_Do you see?_

She smiled at me. I smiled back. They’d chosen well; we were a **match.** Without a single trace of self-consciousness, I leaned in and kissed her lips gently, and she returned the kiss fervently. It was only a few moments, but it was enough. Her smile after was shy and her fingers were stroking mine.

_You will be the seeds._

We all glanced at each other. This time I could see there were exactly twenty of us and we had all paired off.

_You will begin anew._

The being’s four extra limbs wrapped around its body again and it seemed to vibrate softly, its edges blurring, making it hard to tell whether it ended and where the air in the train began.

“Where?” The braided woman asked. “Where are we going?”

_The new world. It will take time. It will be pure. It will be for all of you._

“How many of us in total?” I asked.

_We have chosen nine thousand of you._

So, there were other trains out there, I thought. And who knew what else? Plucked from our dying world. Maybe it really was the being’s influence that was keeping my emotions calm, because it was difficult to feel any horror at the thought of all those billions dying. There was neutrality and the understanding of the failure of the Plan, along with a kind of hope. The hope that things would be better now. Overwhelming all of that, however, was the feeling of being seen. Amy’s hand squeezed mine and our eyes met again.

We didn’t feel rootless anymore.


End file.
